


Not My President

by Paint_Stained_Heart



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: American Politics, American imperialism, Angst, Captain America shitting on Donald Trump, Comfort, M/M, Politics, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Vignette, because he would
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 10:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11228853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paint_Stained_Heart/pseuds/Paint_Stained_Heart
Summary: Post CW, Steve and Bucky have made a home for themselves in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn. While Bucky spends the days at the auto shop getting his hands dirty and his mind off things, Steve's been taking classes in the Village. But the things he's learning make him less and less proud of the American flag he used to boast on his chest. What does it mean to be Captain America when the United States isn't the country he thought it was when he enlisted in the 1940s?Or: A one-shot of Steve not knowing how to cope with America's not-so-spotless history and the present state of affairs.





	Not My President

**Author's Note:**

> I've been torn by my love for Captain America and my growing frustration with the current administration and some of the horrible things I've learned about the U.S. All the historical facts in this are, unfortunately, true, though colored by my own opinions, of course. I guess I just think that Steve Rogers would be pretty upset to find out about these atrocities, but that doesn't mean he can't be Captain America anymore.

It’s an ugly kind of Thursday; the kind where the gray of the clouds matches the gray of the pavement which glows gray on the faces of gray-eyed passersby. A ripple of bobbing black umbrellas floods the sidewalks of Brooklyn as Steve Rogers meanders through the thick of it toward his shared apartment on Fourth Ave, right above Al’s Barber Shop and the liquor store. 

Painfully un-self-aware, he’s just about the only New Yorker _without_ rain gear, and his blond hair is plastered to his face by the time he’s finally mozied up the narrow staircase that leads to the peeling green paint on the door that means _home_. By the time he gets there, the night has turned black save for the firefly-yellow windows and streetlights that pepper the city.

Steve jingles his key ring for a few tense moments, his hands shaking bad enough to make him drop the right key three times, until at last he jimmies it in and turns the lock, opening the old door and letting the warm light from inside spill into the stairwell.

“Steve?” comes a familiar voice; a voice that greets him at the end of every day but that never fails to make his heart stutter. A voice he always fears will be gone by the time he gets home, but unwaveringly is there at the end of every day.

But Steve’s voice isn’t working today, and so the voice comes again, slightly higher pitched. 

“Steve?”

Steve stomps through the foyer and finally into the living room where Bucky lounges, his metal prosthetic resting on the arm of the couch – _their_ couch – a magazine open in his lap, the grease from the auto shop still criss-crossed all over his tank top. 

As Steve steps into the light, Bucky finally catches the look on Steve’s face, which is white as one of the stars on the flag he loves so much. 

“Christ, Rogers. What happened to you?” Bucky starts, standing up and letting the magazine fall forgotten off of his lap and onto the floor.

Steve just stands in the doorway, silhouetted against the night, his gray T-shirt soaked through and his boots leaving puddles on their shag carpeting. He shakes out his hair, droplets spraying all over the room. He sways where he stands, almost like he’s gonna be sick. Bucky remains standing, awkward and just a few feet away from America’s shivering sweetheart who looks like he’s just seen a proper ghost.

“Steve. What is it? Say somethin’,” Bucky implores, stepping toward Steve around the coffee table, but only closing the space between them by a few feet. He’s not exactly used to finding his best mate and also _Captain America_ , king of patriotic speeches and full of the righteous confidence of do-gooders, looking so...lost. Shifty, and lost.

Steve pulls the backpack off his shoulder and it drops to the floor with a dramatic thud. 

“What if we’re wrong?” Steve finally says, a whisper as his blue eyes bore into Bucky’s. His eyes are shining in the lamplight, but he doesn’t let the tears brim over. He swallows and breathes out of his nose. 

Bucky spent a year in recovery in the Wakandan holding facility, was finally released to the States and found himself finally, finally picking up where he left off – in a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Brooklyn with the only asshole who ever really cared if he lived or died. Really, they were just a couple of grandpas eating up stolen time with someone warm to come back to each night. Someone to eat their midnight cereal next to; someone who gives a damn and has a smoke on hand. Someone to bury their face in when the screams rip through them in the middle of the night.

Recovery’s a bitch and a half.

Bucky’s been noticing, though, that Steve’s come back from his courses – the nerd, taking classes at NYU to catch up on his missed U.S. and World History – more and more roughed up, each time a little quieter, a little more haunted. Bucky hasn’t said anything, wants Steve to figure this out for himself like the grown ass man he is, but. 

But.

“What do you mean, ‘what if we’re wrong’?” Bucky echoes, confused. His long dark hair frames his face in the low light.

“I mean, about Captain America. Wearing the stars and stripes on my chest when I go into battle. World War II. All this avenging bullshit. What if we’re _wrong_ ,” Steve’s voice fades out to just a whisper, and he runs his hands through his dripping hair. “What if we got it _all_ wrong, Buck? I enlisted for this country when my lungs were shit and my teeth rattled in my head and I wasn’t even sure if my fucking kidneys were working. I put it _all_ on the line because I believe in freedom. I believe in democracy. In the people. This great...country, of ours.”

“Woah, woah, woah. What happened, Steve? Where’s this coming from? You’re talkin’ crazy” Bucky starts, his eyebrows stitching together.

“School,” Steve says, short. Suddenly his frozen limbs come back to life – he lumbers into the kitchen, opens the refrigerator with the broken handle – super soldier problems – and pulls out a cold one.

“Drinking?” Bucky says, following a step behind Steve. “I thought you couldn’t–”

Steve’s hollow look shuts him down.

While Bucky sits at the little kitchen table, the only light a single tungsten bulb that casts an ominous green glow in the small space and pulses from time to time, Steve leans against the counter, beer in hand, looking like he’d love to put a hole in something any minute now.

“I just can’t believe it, Buck. I really thought this country was good. But it’s two-thousand-and-fucking-seventeen, and I think I’m gonna be right sick with what I’ve been seeing here. I really do.” 

And then Steve’s face, angry and contorted only a second before, melts. It melts, right there in their tiny kitchen, and Steve’s face is contorting in a new way, a way Bucky hasn’t seen before.

Steve’s crying.

“No, no, Rogers, it’s...I...” Bucky tries, not knowing how to comfort. His sister was always better at this than he was, and he’s spent the last year and a half having people throw their arms around him, not the other way around. Still, Steve’s blubbering all over in his drenched clothes and looks small – it’s the first time Bucky can really believe that Captain America ever came from little fist-throwing Steven Grant Rogers. He gets up from the table and leans against the counter next to Steve, rests his head on Steve’s shoulder despite the fact that it’s cold and soaked-through. Bucky looks up across the room, his gray eyes scanning the little life they’ve patched together here in Brooklyn. All the signs of normal life – Steve’s textbooks scattered and open on the table, his sketches tacked to the walls with thumbtacks, groceries in the fridge, a television on mute berating the local news: a shooting near the Museum of Natural History; Buck’s toolbox, his construction boots muddying the floor in the corner. And of course, all the signs of their mixed-up _abnormal_ life – the bowl of burner cell phones in the pantry, the polished suits and armor in their shared closet, the guns and knives hidden conveniently in the nooks and crannies of their new, ‘quiet’ life. 

Steve makes a sloppy, slurping sound and puts his face in his hands. Buck starts rubbing circles into his back, not understanding but not really needing to, either. Steve shakes until he manages to breathe out, hard, and stop his crying. He wipes at the corners of his eyes with his thumb and forefinger.

“I don’t want to be Captain America anymore,” Steve finally mutters, cold and staring ahead of him.

“Tell me what happened,” Bucky urges beside him. Steve takes a long swig of his beer.

“You know what this country’s done?” Steve demands, the fire and brimstone returning to his voice. “Do you have any idea what I wear on my shoulders when I put that suit on and fight on behalf of the United States of America?”

“I mean, no country’s perfect...” Bucky starts. He dropped out of high school to get a job during the Depression and support his folks, and hasn’t exactly taken interest in this century. He still feels like a visitor, like he’s about to wake up from a bad (good?) dream. So no, he really _hasn’t_ any idea about what it means to be an American beyond a good Fourth of July barbecue and the feeling in one’s veins when he opens a crisp, government-issued letter to find he’s been drafted into the most bloody war in all of human history. For the boyfriend of Captain fuckin’ America, he’s never been much of a patriot.

“Buck, I’m not just talkin’ about slavery. Or the draft. Or even the fact that women couldn’t vote ‘til you were a skinny three-year-old. This is bigger than that. This country...it’s a parasite. What I’m learnin’ in school, these professors, see, they’re tellin’ me all sorts of stuff. Horrible, horrible stuff. Stuff Captain America would never stand for, I assure you.”

“Like what?” Bucky asks, rotating his head so he can look up at Steve from where his head rests in the divot between his shoulder and bicep. His metal hand snakes around Steve’s front and holds him there.

“You ever heard of the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, Buck? Shit went on for _forty years._ By the U.S. Public Health Service no less. Bunch of creepy doctors let Black folk with the clap go undiagnosed and _die_ just for the sake of their data.

“Then you got segregation. Granted, we were in the ice for some of that bit, but still. I mean, what the fuck? Makin’ people of different colors drink from different water fountains? Use different bathrooms? I don’t understand, Buck, it says right there in the Declaration of Independence: all men are created equal. It don’t mention ‘separate but equal’ for a goddamn good reason.”

“They called it separate but equal?” Bucky says, disgust running like sandpaper on his already coarse voice.

“Sure did. And then we got the bible-thumpers chasing down all these poor gay folks, queer kids just like you ‘n’ me, sayin’ they’re gonna rot in hell, all kinds of nasty things. I mean, American citizens protested _soldiers’ funerals_ just for loving who they loved. Soldiers like us, you realize? Served their country. Honorable men and women, blasted for something they can’t control. And why the hell would we want them to control it, even if they could? Why do people care so much about who’s humping who and yet can’t be bothered to give a damn about how more folks in the U.S. live below the poverty line than ever in our history?

“I don’t get it,” Steve continues, the muscles in his neck working and his face turning red as angry tears start to spill down his face. A vein pulses in his neck. “These people don’t want to let hungry men and women get their food stamps unless they can pass a drug test. You know that? To me, that says _people on drugs don’t deserve to eat_. What d’they think? These people don’t have kids? Families? That they’re somehow inhuman, instead of people who made mistakes and deserve medical attention, not being sentenced to starve?

“Jesus, and don’t get me started on this...this Islamaphobia bullshit. Sarah Rogers, God–” he winces, rubbing his hand over his face, “–God rest her soul, came into this country a poor, starving Irish immigrant with one on the way. _She_ took someone’s job. _She_ came from somewhere else. She followed the American dream, kept her head down, learned her way around Brooklyn and saved hundreds of American lives before TB took her. Gah! Buck, where the fuck does it say ‘Come in only if you’re a white non-Muslim’ on the Statue of Liberty?! There’s no asterisk in _Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free_ –

“We snuck into the Statue of Liberty, once, didn’t we? Didn’t we, Rogers?” Bucky asks, scooting away from Steve and opening a cabinet to fill a glass of water. He means the question genuinely, still needing Steve to fill in a few gaps in his smoothie of a memory.

Steve almost chuckles. “Yeah, Buck, we did.” A minute passes. Two. Their light bulb flickers.

“I just...can’t, anymore,” Steve says, downing the rest of the beer in one gulp. “I can’t wear those stars and stripes in good faith, Buck. I went down in a plane in the goddamn Arctic tundra for this nation and woke up in this foreign century – foreign _country –_ and I don’t know what we’ve become.” Steve’s almost laughing now, his blue eyes roaming up to the ceiling at how wildly ridiculous it all is.

Bucky’s metal hand still stretches across Steve’s stomach and clutches his side, and his thumb sweeps gently up and down against the soft parts of Steve’s middle – not always easy to find on someone chiseled like a god. 

“I’m sorry, Steve. I’m sorry this country of ours didn’t return the favor. You always seen too much good in people.”

Steve actually laughs at that, crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes and all, and Buck drops the arm that’s stretched across Steve’s middle as Steve cracks open the fridge again, harsh white light filling their Brooklyn shoebox.

“Myself included,” Bucky amends, a little more solemnly, as Steve tears the cap off his next beer bottle, which definitely _wasn’t_ a twist-off. 

“I see _exactly_  how much good you got in you,” Steve says now, facing Bucky and pulling him in by the belt loops on his jeans until their hips touch and their faces are real close. 

Bucky turns away, blushing, and tears himself off of Captain Maybe-America. “Quit it, Stevie, I don’t want you sweet talkin’ me.” He pulls a cartridge of Marlboro reds off the counter and a little neon green Bic, and with a practiced flick of his hand he’s got the cigarette in his mouth and is using one hand to light and the other to shield from the breeze. ‘Course, there’s no breeze in the house, but old habits die hard.

“Christ, Buck, what did we say about smokin’ in the house?” Steve says, wiping the last of the tear tracks off his cheeks and opening a window to let the September night drift into the place.

“Do it often ‘n’ always,” Bucky retorts, smiling where he leans against the counter with his hands in his pockets.

“Somehow I don’t remember that,” Steve replies, eyebrows raised. “I dunno, Buck. I’m serious. I don’t know what to do, next time Stark gives me a ring and expects me to fly across the world at the drop of a hat. I don’t want to interfere where we don’t belong. That’s what Americans have been doing since before we were fuckin’ born. How about we fight for some Native American rights. You hear about Standing Rock? Fix some domestic issues around here, ‘fore we go meddling where we’re not wanted.”

“Ain’t that the reason you didn’t sign the Sokovia Accords?” Bucky asks, watching Steve drain his second beer and set the can on the counter. It rattles but doesn’t fall.

“Sure, sure,” Steve responds, sitting at the table with his third beer now. “But that’s paperwork. No one can make me go. And no one can stop me. Doesn’t mean that next time Nat’s on the phone and needs my help I’m gonna actually be able to say no.

“I wanna throw up lookin’ at that shield, Bucky. I really do.” Another swig. “I can’t be a blind follower a second longer. I can’t turn away from...from the catastrophe on the home front. Look what the Drumpf is doing.”

“That a pet name for Donald Trump?” Bucky asks, and Steve’s both annoyed and glad that Bucky’s been so blissfully unaware these past months.

“Yeah. Yeah, Buck, it is. He’s an _idiot_.”

“So’re you, punk.”

“Not so dumb that I want to watch the climate burn just ‘cause I got my grubby fingers in big oil. Not so dumb that I think women were put on this Earth to suck my fucking cock.”

Bucky puts his arms up. “Slow down, Steve. I’m just teasin’ ya.”

“It’s not funny anymore,” he sighs hugely, sets down yet another finished beer. “It’s just not fuckin’ funny. This country’d rather see two men holdin’ guns than holdin’ hands. Tragedy after tragedy. You got Bill Clinton getting head in the Oval Office. Trayvon Martin killed for walking home with his hood up and a bag of skittles in his pocket because white men get off on killing innocent kids. Sandy Hook! Pullin’ out of the climate agreement. We’re the only country in the world that hasn’t signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. _The rights of the goddamn child._ Puttin’ up dictators where we saw fit, puttin’ war machines in the hands of kids in the Middle East. Playing God in countries that have things we want and not giving a flying fuck about human rights violations anywhere else. How about Rwanda, huh? Where were we then? What about North Korea? All because we think we’re the...protector of the free world, some shit like that.” 

Bucky looks up at him from the table, still clinging to the butt of his cigarette even though it needs to go in the ashtray. He looks grimy, a little sweaty; there’s still grease on his forehead and inner arm.

“Aren’t you tired, Steve?”

Steve looks up from where he was picking at his thumbnail, lost in thought. He looks into Bucky’s eyes for practically the first time all night, and the fight’s gone. He’s got bags under his eyes, hair still damp. He looks defeated.

“Never been so exhausted in my life.”

“Can I give you my two cents, Steve? I don’t think all that stuff you said is what you carry on your back when you put that shield over your shoulders. You know that, right?” Bucky tries, rolling the butt of the cigarette back and forth between his fingers, leaving nicotine stains in the grooves of his fingerprints.

“I don’t understand,” Steve says, quiet-like.

“When you put on that shield, you fight for the America you believe in. You don’t take orders from nobody. That’s why you’re a _captain,_ Steve. I was a sergeant. James B. Barnes of the 107th was a dead-eyed motherfucker who shot whoever his superiors pointed at. And I counted on those men to point straight. I took an oath, they took an oath. It meant that I could count on ‘em, that whatever fucker they had me sniping goddamn deserved it. They were Nazis, I mean, I think we can all agree, 1945 or 2017, that they deserved it. 

“But now we got some gray areas. Lotta folks are upset. This country’s done some fucked up shit – shit that maybe we can’t come back from. And I ain’t defending this nation of ours, ‘cause Lord knows it fucked me sideways and I’ll never be the same for it.” Bucky flexes the metal hand, grimaces. “But if there’s one thing the American people are good at, it’s hope.”

“Hope,” Steve repeats. Well, mouths. No sound comes out.

“Sure. Hope. The little voice in the back of your head that says things can get better. That people can be better. That reparations are within arms reach. That we can’t save yesterday’s kids but we can sure as hell save today’s,” Bucky continues, more words coming out of him now than in the last week combined. 

His voice breaks. “Steve, who the hell’ll be able to cling onto hope if Captain America himself hangs up his shield?”

At that, Steve’s head falls to his chest. He doesn’t reach for another beer, and certainly doesn’t feel anything from the first three. Regardless, his head is pounding with his heartbeat and his body aches like he’s just run back-to-back marathons. 

He’s crying again, silent tears at first but then full-on sobs, his chest and shoulders jumping with the heaving breaths, his hands forming fists over his eyes. There’s snot all over his face that he doesn’t bother to wipe off, and he’s starting to sound like a wounded animal.

“Steve...” Bucky tries, standing up and pulling Steve’s hands away from his face gently with his own hands, flesh and bionic. 

“I’m sorry,” Steve blubbers, too embarrassed to look Bucky in the eye, which is frustrating to the former Winter Soldier. After all the times Bucky’s cried in front of him – all the times Steve _told_ Bucky it’s okay to cry – and here he is, ashamed of himself.

“Don’t be sorry,” Bucky snaps. “You’re allowed to show a goddamn feeling, Rogers. You’re allowed to be pissed and you’re allowed to be hurt. If you got feelings, well, feel ‘em. America’s taken advantage of your propaganda and your speeches, your armor, your blows, your fuckin’ museum exhibit. They chewed you up and spit you out, and for what? So they could keep bleedin’ the poor and helping the rich, gentrifying our neighborhoods, going back on the Constitution? You got a right to be upset, Rogers.” Now it’s Bucky swallowing, Bucky biting back tears and blinking too fast. He pushes Steve on the shoulders, upset, hot breath coming out of his nose. 

And then Steve leans in and kisses him, long and deep, the salt of their tears mixing as their faces cling to one another, sloppy and fast in the dim kitchen. 

“You know the myth of Atlas?” Bucky whispers into Steve’s mouth, who moves to Bucky’s tan, exposed neck as Barnes starts to talk. 

“Sure,” Steve says into Bucky’s collarbone. Bucky kisses the top of Steve’s head.

“Dude was damned to hold up the heavens for all eternity. As a punishment,” Bucky continues, lighting another cigarette as Steve’s mouth continues to roam. His body jerks when Steve finds a sensitive spot; Bucky tastes like sweat.

“Sayin’ I’m like Atlas?” Steve asks, pulling away to look into Bucky’s eyes. He reaches out a hand and brushes back some of the curtain of Bucky’s hair; one corner of Steve’s mouth turns up in an almost-smile that would land better if his cheeks weren’t still wet.

“No,” Bucky says, a laugh somewhere in his voice as he shakes his head gently. “I’m saying some other loser already got destined to carry the world on his shoulders, so you don’t have to, punk.”

“What if Atlas drops the ball?” Steve asks, his eyes searching Bucky’s. Searching for answers, searching for something Bucky knows he can’t give Steve, not really: comfort. No one’ll ever be able to comfort Steve, and it makes Bucky’s stomach cold to think about it. A man who spends his whole life putting other people before himself will never be comforted. Not so long as another person in this world is suffering.

“I got a friend who’ll catch it,” Bucky says, the light reflecting in his eyes. “He’s never let me down once.” Steve can’t hold back the next tear that falls – just one – and before Bucky can say another word, Steve scoops him up and carries him across the apartment, the lit cigarette bouncing between Bucky’s lips as a surprised laugh ripples through him.

“Kiss me,” Steve requests hungrily, falling into the tangle of white sheets back-first and letting Bucky crawl on top of him.

“For America?”

“Shut up and kiss me, punk.”

 

 

 


End file.
